A Serious Hunt
by Right What Is Wrong
Summary: Certain parties decide to end the Death Eater threat before the second war can properly begin. Set in the summer after Goblet of Fire. Rated for violence and subject matter.


**Author's Note:** A quick oneshot of the "immoral yet efficient" genre. The author's views on real-world vigilantism are entirely separate from fantasy-world activities, in which we all know the victims are monsters, the charges are true, and the vigilantes heroi... uh... somewhat sympathetic.

* * *

Azkaban eroded both one's morality and one's ability to suffer foolishness gladly.

So did a childhood at the Dursleys.

* * *

Titus Avery died in his sleep one fair summer night. Fortunately he was a widower who lived alone, or someone might have seen the silver, spidery device that passed through his window as though it were not there, scuttled towards his sleeping form, jabbed him in the left arm with one thin, pointed leg, and left the way it came. Had it been captured, it might have been identified as a unique Dark artifact dedicated to assassination, and the poison it carried an undetectable substance capable of producing what seemed to be an ordinary heart attack. With ill luck, it might have been identified as belonging to the House of Black.

However, no one beheld it; if a tree falls in the forest on a Death Eater, does anyone give a damn?

Samuel Crabbe was accosted by a mugger on the way out of his favorite brothel in Knockturn Alley. Said mugger, being under an Invisibility Cloak, could not be identified. The murder investigation, while looking for possible other motives, uncovered evidence that Crabbe had liked his prostitutes rather young, and the Aurors developed a sudden lack of interest in further pursuing the case.

Thaddeus Nott kept holed up behind heavy protections, conducting all business from home via owl, and remained secure in his own safety. Until his son found his mangled body, that was.

The Aurors found, after thorough investigation of the scene, that the dome of protection around his home only extended to ground level, and something had dug a hole under the edge thereof. Not a human; it looked like it had been done by some animal. Perhaps a large dog - that would match the wounds on the man's body.

To list more would be tedious. The list went on and on and on.

The only commonality the victims had was that they bore the Dark Mark.

* * *

The Minister condemned this rash of savage murders of upstanding citizens of the community.

Soon after, Lucius Malfoy visited him and, after a pleasant chat and an exchange of Galleons, looked through a few of his files. Fudge found this most untoward, but Lucius _did_ pay well, and he _had_ seemed harried recently, so he let such rudeness pass without comment and soon said his farewells.

The problem was that Lucius Malfoy was in fact dead.

A greater problem for Fudge _personally_ was that, through sleight of hand, the man appearing to be Lucius Malfoy had in fact swapped his papers with duplicates conjured under the desk with _Gemino_ , and the actual papers soon made an appearance in The Quibbler uncensored, redacted in the Daily Prophet (but not enough!), and, insultingly, filed down to the juiciest bits for Witch Weekly. It was most undignified to have the least legal bits of one's finances splashed on a page opposite candid shirtless pictures of Victor Krum.

But the greater problem for the Aurors was that the Malfoy heir and his mother would be found unconscious, gagged and bound to their own beds, and Lucius Malfoy would be found dead after what Moody's kind of Auror would call "enhanced interrogation", with Veritaserum still present in his bloodstream. Everything not nailed down or enchanted with Tracking Charms had been taken. The area was completely free of the usual traces of an intruder, such as loose hair, skin flakes, or blood; since even the Malfoys' loose hairs were absent, the investigators took it that the Polyjuice-abusing murderer had thoroughly cleaned the area.

The remarkable part was that Malfoy Manor was both well-protected and Unplottable. Someone would have to already know its location to go there, or be taken there by someone who did. Since both Draco and Narcissa, though both Obliviated, swore Lucius had not taken anyone home the prior night, it must have been a close acquaintance of the Malfoys. That, the Aurors thought, gave them a short list of suspects.

They never did consider the possible collaboration of a House-Elf.

* * *

Voldemort's support eroded rapidly as it became apparent the Order, or someone associated with it, was returning fire.

Assassinating uppity Mudbloods and blood-traitors in their home was an honorable tradition, but this? This was just dirty. If a Pureblood couldn't trust the safety of his own manor, who could he trust?

The Dark Lord didn't help much, either. Somehow the murderer always knew to strike at a manor he _wasn't_ visiting.

The Death Eaters, by and large, had proven themselves cowards the first time their Lord fell. The ones who didn't were now best fit for St. Mungo's. The sudden decision of several surviving Death Eaters to spend more time at their summer estates in Australia and North America did not go unmissed by Voldemort, but he was in no state to punish the ones still with him, as he had few to spare.

And they hadn't even properly restarted the war yet! This was absurd! Did even Dumbledore's side care for the few Muggle-murdering raids they'd already held?!

Apparently, they learned, when one such raid ended prematurely as the house in which they reveled blew sky-high. It seemed someone had been rudely packing masses of Muggle explosives into the attic while they were distracted, then set a fuse and Apparated out.

Officially it was a gas main going up, so there were no major consequences, but it had been extraordinarily rude. All were badly injured, Rodolphus and Mulciber died of their injuries, and, worst of all, the Muggles they were playing with had been euthanized by the blast! How could they have fun that way?!

It did horrible things to morale, that was for certain.

And they still had no confirmation who it was.

* * *

And they would end without knowing it, either.

One particularly gruesome murder of an upstanding member of the community had a hint left at the scene pointing to Alfred Travers, whose home the Death Eaters happened to be using for headquarters. The Auror Dawson Dawlish approached to investigate, found the area rigged with anti-Apparation spells and illegal contact-conflagration traps, and went back for help.

The Auror squad that came back found a Travers desperately uninterested in letting them indoors for a chat, and, upon forcing entrance, found a passel of Death Eaters and a supposedly-dead Dark Lord very annoyed about this entire inability to Apparate away.

Unfortunately for the Death Eaters, a rookie Auror escaped the crossfire that followed and brought back, as her backup, the Order of the Phoenix.

The fight ended with all Death Eaters dead or incapacitated, a few dead Aurors and Order members, and Voldemort once again a bodiless spirit. Albus Dumbledore gave a very proper speech before the Wizengamot regarding tragic loss of life, but seemed remarkably dry-eyed about the amount of legislation he could now pass with hs usual political opponents being six feet under.

The funny thing was that Travers denied any involvement in the original murder, even under Veritaserum, and swore he knew nothing about those spells that had been around his house. Since he had run right into one of the traps, the witnesses were inclined to believe him.

So who had?

* * *

"Harry, did we _have_ to spare Snivellus?"

"We've been over this, Sirius." Harry sipped at his Butterbeer. "Not going after him is _proof_ this wasn't you. Who's the first one you would have gone after, given no planning whatsoever?"

Sirius sighed. "Fine," he said stubbornly. "But couldn't I have gotten him later? I don't trust for one second that he was really a spy for _our_ side."

"It turns out that would have been a mercy, actually," Harry said dryly. At Sirius's look of curiosity, he elaborated. "Think. You're Voldemort. Someone knows all your movements. They had access to Malfoy Manor. They know everyone actively in your service." He raised an eyebrow. "They are..."

Sirius choked on his Firewhiskey. As he recovered from sputtering, he raised his head to meet Harry's eyes, a broad smile dawning upon his face. " _No_." He looked wide-eyed at Harry, who was nodding. "He thought we were _Snivellus_?"

"I have to admire how much of the Cruciatus he took without snapping," Harry remarked. "And the other things." He grimaced. "I think he'd be a vegetable if the news of you dispatching the Carrows hadn't come while he was still being tortured. Around then, Voldemort realized a man couldn't be in two places at one time."

Sirius only took a long sip of his Firewhiskey.

"Anyway, according to Hermione - Dumbledore's given them _permission_ to write me again, now that the war's apparently done for - Snape cut off his left forearm with some Dark spell right after that, left a long, rambling note complaining about everyone and everything, and disappeared. I don't know any more than that," Harry said, shrugging. "For all I know, he's in Peru by now. Hermione said his note sounded like he didn't want anything to do with England ever again."

"Hm. Good riddance." Sirius took another sip of his drink. "Harry?" he said after a while.

"Yeah?"

"I... I'm just a little concerned with how well you're taking this, that's all." Sirius put his glass down. "Most kids your age would... be a little more disturbed about this. Even if your role was letting me borrow James's cloak and passing on visions..."

Harry smiled humorlessly. "Sirius." He got up and started pacing around. "I've told you. I killed a man at eleven. He _burned_ to death beneath my hands. He was trying to kill me, yeah, but that didn't make his screams any quieter.

"Then there was the diary in second year - and even if it wasn't actually a person, it felt like one. Yeah, it was Voldemort, but we'd talked. I'd even trusted him, a little. And he tried to kill me, and died screaming and thrashing in a puddle of his own... ink.

"Then came the year I didn't kill anyone. Wormtail got out alive." Though he certainly wasn't now. "The year after that, someone died because of that. And a lot more innocent people had the _potential_ to die."

He stopped pacing and faced Sirius. "So is it really such a wonder that I'd be glad to end the second war before it began, by any means necessary?"

"Harry..." Sirius sighed, shaking his head. "You talk like an Auror, not a boy. And not a fresh-faced one, either. More the type we had toward the end of the war." He stopped shaking his head and stared down at his folded hands. "I failed you. A _lot_ of people failed you. You never really had a childhood, and... I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it. Besides, what's done is done." A grin broke out upon his face. "And besides, things are looking up. Voldemort's still around, but I don't think the recruiting will go too well, if he ever makes it back to a body at all... and his old base isn't around to go on any more Muggle hunts. Or police "blood-traitors" by force. So no fearing for Hermione, no worrying for Ron... No wondering if Voldemort's going to pop up near the end of term..." He stretched, and smiled at his godfather. "You know something, Sirius? OWLs or not, I'm actually looking forward to fifth year."


End file.
